Abina and the Important Men: A Graphic History

Liz Clarke is a South African professional illustrator based in Cape Town. She illustrated Abina and the Important Men: A Graphic History as well as All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa 1910-1948, Witness to the Age of Revolution: The Odyssey of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam, and Perpetua’s Journey: Faith, Gender, and Power in the Roman Empire. She illustrates full-color fantasy art with a primary focus on freelancing illustrations for graphic histories. Clarke’s repertoire ranges from illustrations for academic works, like those published by Oxford University Press, to illustrating stories written by science fiction author Orson Scott Card. She’s created art for role-playing games like The Fate of Inglemia, KidWorld, and Hoodoo Blues. Furthermore, she’s created art for fantasy-science fiction magazines like Strange Horizons and Heliotrope, designed covers for Spacesuits and Sixguns Magazine, produced the cover for Patrick Kent’s poetry collection, Two Six Heave, and created interior art for fantasy novel A Foreign Shore by Forrest Johnson. Clarke offers her services as a freelancer online and primarily deals in historical and speculative works.

Abina Mansah is the focus of Abina and the Important Men and protagonist of Part 1, a real person who fought for her emancipation from Quamina Eddoo in Cape Coast in the 1870s via the case, Regina v. Quamina Eddoo. Little is known about Abina’s life outside of her own testimony, and what is known is the product of examining historical records from the time period. According to Abina, she’d been living with her big family when, during a war, she was kidnapped and forced into slavery. This pattern repeated, as she was again taken during another war and enslaved as spoils of war. Later, she met her husband, Yowahwah (Yaw Awoah), but he left her with Quamina Eddoo and took her beads, which symbolized their marriage. Abina was forced to work for Quamina’s sister, Eccoah Coom, and did manual labor at the risk of being beaten. She was told she’d have to marry a local man (Tando), but didn’t want to. Because of her lack of freedom despite the law, Abina fled Eddoo’s house and made her way to Cape Coast, where she pursued emancipation in the courtroom. Although she ultimately lost her case, she was able to remain free because of the law—but Eddoo got away with slavery and continued to enslave others. Abina’s voice allows her story and that of others like her to live on.

Quamina Eddoo, like Abina, has little presence in historical documentation, so he’s not considered an “important man.” This isn’t to say he isn’t important to the story, but his sociopolitical status positioned him to be written out of history. The primary information known about Eddoo, apart from his testimony in Abina’s case, is that he “was a wealthy country ‘gentleman’ who owned many slaves and other dependents, interacted with merchants and traders, and could afford the leading lawyer in the region” (131). It is believed he was unable to read or write. In the context of Abina’s story, Eddoo is the primary antagonist. Although Eddoo and Abina share the commonality of largely being forgotten by history, the former used the privileges he had over the latter and young girls like her. His industry in Salt Pond relied on the labor of those he enslaved, and Abina’s work, ironically, is probably part of the reason why he was rich enough to afford a lawyer like James Hutton Brew—despite breaking British law. Eddoo lived near his sister, Eccoah Coom, and according to Abina’s testimony, gave Abina to his sister as an enslaved person. Eddoo’s characterization illustrates him as someone unconcerned with British law. He sees his work as necessary and seems frustrated that Abina is challenging him, due to the case’s implications for his other child laborers.

James Hutton Brew acts as an antagonist in Abina’s story, as he is Quamina Eddoo’s defense attorney. Historical documentation includes the most information about Brew, reflecting his power and contrasting with those with less privileges like Abina. During Abina’s case, Brew was “the only trained lawyer” (130). This is evident in his manipulative language and rhetorical skills, used to undermine witness testimony. While defending Eddoo, Brew was expected to serve as a conduit between African and British cultures by Judge Melton because he came from an Irish family and had many powerful connections within the local community. However, Judge Melton and many others didn’t trust Brew, partially for racist reasons because he was of “mixed heritage,” but also due to his involvement in the Fante Confederation, an attempt to create an independent state out of Cape Coast in the early 1870s (130). This pursuit for an independent state stemmed from a desire to further instill European ideals in African peoples, which Brew saw as necessary. Despite defending a guilty man, Brew’s legacy was the strongest in written record due to his power—at least before the writing of this novel.